


no need to wonder if i ever think of you

by onekisstotakewithme



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Canon Era, Episode: s03e08 The Battle of Starcourt, Fire-forged Friends, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, set during 3-month timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 03:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19822003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onekisstotakewithme/pseuds/onekisstotakewithme
Summary: It's a transition stage for all of them.





	no need to wonder if i ever think of you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_raven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_raven/gifts).



> DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE SEASON 3 FINALE
> 
> SPOILERS AHOY.

The day after the mall burns, and the future goes up in smoke, Murray shows up at Joyce's front door. 

She's not expecting him, is in fact sure he'd already gone back to Illinois, to bury himself even deeper underground with his conspiracy theories and his own grief.

Instead he's his normal pain-in-the-ass self. "I'm staying here for a few days."

"Oh- okay," Joyce says, stepping aside to let him in. "I- I guess I could use the help."

"Well we all know that, Joyce," he says dryly, and neither of them smiles. He kicks one of the empty cartons out of the way. "You still need to pack up this goddamn mess of a house. Don’t you ever clean?" 

"I can't leave-" she starts to say, but then remembers the date at Enzo's won't be happening, and her eyes blur. “I was supposed to- to meet Hop-”

Murray pulls her onto the couch, oddly gentle for once. "Hey, hey, Joyce. It's fine. It’s okay."

"What about this is okay?" she asks, rubbing at her eyes. "None of it is okay, Murray. I have to pack the house and- and plan Hop's funeral, and... and I've got El to take care of..."

"Well hey, on the bright side, Jim sure got you back," Murray says, and she frowns. "You  _ did  _ stand him up.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she asks. 

“I know you do.” He shrugs. “You stood Jim up. I went and got Alexei a fucking corn dog. We’ve both got things we’re gonna regret forever, Joyce. You're think you're special?”

"I don't have room for you," she warns, wiping her eyes. 

"I won't stay long," he promises in return. They both pretend it's true. 

And so Murray moves in, and though on the outside he's his normal grumpy self, he seems... subdued, like he's in a similar state of shell shock to her. 

He does the dishes, he helps with the boys, and packing boxes, and paradoxically giving her space and company at the same time.

And, he actually is a "goddamn model citizen" for once, according to him, and she wishes she and Hop could laugh over it, but she’ll be laughing alone. 

And Murray stays on her couch.

(Sometimes when he dreams, he cries out in Russian, and nobody mentions it.)

(Sometimes he mutters to himself about corn dogs, and when the boys are watching  _ Looney Tunes _ , Murray, without fail, switches it over to the news.) 

The boys think he's irascible, but he's really just grieving, the way Joyce is, the way they all are. 

And then there's El. 

Joyce brings El home on July fourth, because it's Joyce's fault that Hop is gone, and  _ Goddammit _ , the least she can do for Hop is care for his daughter. 

So Joyce sets up a cot in the corner of her room, and pretends it's enough. 

And El hobbles from room to room on crutches, like she's looking for Hop. She's wearing threadbare hand-me-downs of Will's and some of Joyce's old clothing, because she refuses to go back to the cabin. 

The day of the funeral, Dr. Owens drops by, grey and sickly with the kind of regrets Joyce shares (the what-if, if-only kind of regrets), passing over an envelope of official documents that leave her speechless. And finally, she finds the words, so small in the face of everything. “He wanted  _ me  _ to take her?”

"He didn't tell you?" he asks gently, sitting at her kitchen table (a kitchen table of a thousand meals and a dozen D&D games, where she and Murray sit and drink when they talk about Hop late at night, the table where all the most important people in her life have sat at one point or another).

She shakes her head, holding the birth certificate, the tiny black letters spelling out  _ Jane Hopper  _ swimming before her eyes once Owens has laid out the situation. "No, he..."

"The Chief was smart, getting all this together,” Owens says. “Almost like he knew something might happen. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner, I just… figured you knew. Since you took her in and all.”

"I’m all she has. Besides... besides Hop.”

"Seems you and the Chief were on the same frequency then," Owens says with a shrug. It shouldn't shock her, that Hop trusts her with El, not after the last two years, but it hurts all the same.

So El stays with them, on a borrowed cot in an unfamiliar room, and Murray stays too, camped out on the couch.

It's a transition stage for all of them. 

And the house is never quiet. Murray keeps the TV turned up to drown out his thoughts (it's proof how shaken he is that he hasn't offered any theories as to how Hop might have survived, and she doesn't ask). The members of the party are always over, singing and laughing in a house painted black, and even as she packs the boxes, it feels like moving on, in a way that feels like laughing at a funeral.

(Nobody laughs at Hop's funeral).

A week after the mall burns, Joyce catches El trying to sneak into the woods with a handful of Eggos to leave for Hop, and they both end up crying, because if only it were as simple as Hop being trapped in the Upside Down.

It's too soon, she thinks, as she holds her new daughter,  _ Hop’s daughter _ . It's too goddamn soon. 

At night, she listens to El breath, listens to the echoes of Murray's nightmares down the hall, and relives a few of her own, while she lies awake wondering where to go next.

And El crawls into bed with her one night, a month after the end times, her cheeks wet, and whispers "can I come with you?"

"Of course, sweetheart," Joyce tells her softly, stroking her. "You’re one of us now."

“You still- you still want me?”

“Yes. I  _ promise _ .” 

But none of it is permanent. 

It's a transition stage, with a house full of strays. 

Two months after, she sets a map down on the table and asks her kids (all three of them), where they want to go.

Three months after the world ends, she sells the house. 

On their last night in the house, she gets a couple of pizzas and they eat picnic-style on the living room floor, all of them 

Mike and El are curled up on one corner of the couch, as Will tries to teach Erica the finer points of D&D, with Nancy and Jonathan both chiming in. 

Murray is telling a rapt Lucas and Max about some of his wilder conspiracy theories (he’s leaving first thing in the morning, leaving only a bottle of vodka and a card with his new phone number behind when he goes), while Dustin, Steve and Robin huddle in the corner, heads bent together. 

But there's a conspicuous absence, and a box on Joyce's bed marked "Hopper", and this house is full of ghosts. 

And it surprises her, how she can plan a future so soon after a near-apocalyptic event. 

It surprises her how the world goes on after the end.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from my favourite Queen song "Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)


End file.
